Newsletter Archive July 23, 2021 Puer teas stand a world apart from other styles. Their flavors uniquely complex, challenging and delicious. But Puer has only recently become the famous style that has tea enthusiasts worldwide hunting it down to explore its intricacies. Back in the summer of 2000, Austin found himself exploring Yunnan itself.… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Jul. 16, 2021 The new 2021 crop of the world’s oldest black tea is here: the delicately pine-smoked Tongmu Lapsang Souchong. Also in stock is a small lot of 2021 Tongmu Zui Chun Fang (Drunken Peach), a new approach to black tea made with slow and gradual oxidation techniques borrowed from Wulong tea… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Jul. 9, 2021 This week brings our last micro-lot of green tea for the year. Welcome Huang Jin Ye, a brilliant yellow-colored green tea made from the rare “Golden Leaf” cultivar of tea plant. It’s made by the innovative Yu Shunhu — the Anji County tea maker behind our Anji Hong and Yu… // MORE
Newsletter Archive July 1, 2021 Where is the hardest place to source tea in China? If you ask us, it’s Anxi County, Fujian. A bundle of teas from this challenging provenance just arrived, including the much-anticipated Tieguanyin White Tea and the first Anxi Wulongs of the year, Golden Guanyin and Monkey Picked. This weekend you… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Jun. 25, 2021 Zhuping kept a weekly ritual for nearly 15 years. Every Friday afternoon, she hosted a tea tasting at our tea house. Her ritual not only let her taste a lot of tea, it introduced her to new friends. As an immigrant, getting to know her guests enriched her experience and… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Jun. 18, 2021 It’s hot. The antidote? A special micro-lot of green tea. Welcome Mountain Forest Huangshan Maofeng — a green tea born from cold spring mornings and largely untended tea bushes in a remote part of the Huangshan mountain range. You could say it took generations of tea makers to make this… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Jun. 11, 2021 We’re taking a short pause from debuting 2021’s green, white, and yellow teas to show the darker wulongs some appreciation. According to the old Chinese agricultural calendar, now is just the right time to take a breath. We’re in the heart of Mangzhong, a solar term named for fruiting grain.… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Jun. 4, 2021 Yang Guangqing had no idea how he was going to make a living in the backwoods of Youle Mountain. He was a city boy who had just left his home in Chongqing, the largest city in China, to the middle of the highland rainforest in Yunnan Province, and he’d done… // MORE
Newsletter Archive May 26, 2021 When plant scientists came to a remote family farm to collect leaf cuttings from good tea bushes, the Gui family knew exactly where to take them. Perched on the narrow hillside of their land was a tea bush, unusually old, maybe hundreds of years old, that grew strange pale leaves… // MORE
Newsletter Archive May 21, 2021 The wind-blown hills of Moganshan were once a hideout for mythic swordsmiths, gangsters, and even Mao Zedong. Today, they’re home to the Zhao family tea farm. Here, three generations of female tea makers work together: Grandmother Wang Xiangzhen, Daughter Zhao Xianqin, and Granddaughter Zhang Xiaonan. The lives (and the life… // MORE
Newsletter Archive May 14, 2021 Something odd was going on at Anhui tea farms in the late 19th century. Communities of innovative tea makers, working in distant parts of the province, gave the world two of the strangest green teas ever produced: Tai Ping Houkui and Lu’an Gua Pian. These teas were not just unique… // MORE
Newsletter Archive May 7, 2021 Every year, just in time for Mother’s Day, we feature the fresh arrival of Guzhu Zisun (Purple Bamboo Shoot), a traditional green tea made by a squad of mothers and grandmothers. It’s only appropriate we continue. As of this year, the head of the operation, Ms. Pei Hongfeng, is now… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Apr. 30, 2021 2021 Ming Qian Anji Baicha (Early Harvest Anji) and Bi Luo Chun are here. Earlier this year, Zhuping found herself in a foot chase with our Bi Luo Chun maker. Zhuping ran behind Mr. Lu in the rainy streets of his village on Xishan island, calling after him, “Mr. Lu!… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Apr. 23, 2021 In China’s agricultural calendar, we’ve just entered “the grain rains.” The start of this period marks the end to the early-spring tea harvests for all but the coldest origins. For all of us, that means the earliest 2021 teas are here and just in time to see the cactus flowers… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Apr. 16, 2021 Fresh 2021 Baihao Yinzhen (Silver Needle) is here and for just this first weekend, we’re offering it to you at a discount. There’s something different about Baihao Yinzhen when it’s just been made. In the first few months after production, Silver Needle’s fresh hay and green fruit notes are at… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Apr. 9, 2021 30 years ago, a sip of Longjing tea started a chain reaction that moved Seven Cups into existence. Austin received a gift of some curious flat-leaf tea from a friend who had just returned from his hometown in Zhejiang province, China. It was love at first brew. The only problem… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Apr. 1, 2021 As a new tea season opens, we’re toasting to the memory of our friend Mr. Chen Dehua. Chen Dehua was one of Wuyishan’s most important teamakers. Some people knew Mr. Chen as “The Father of Da Hong Pao.” Da Hong Pao (aka Big Red Robe) of course, is the most… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Mar. 26, 2021 Way out in the Pacific, a dragon just looked up from the waves and sent rain for the spring crops. That rain found its way to the tea crops, at least. In many of China’s tea gardens this past weekend, when a warm day of sunlight finally broke through on… // MORE
Newsletter Archive Mar. 12, 2021 On a misty morning last week, tea makers, tea scholars and officials gathered in Wuyishan National Park to remind the tea bushes there that it is time to wake up. The ritual, han shan, literally “calling the mountain” reached its apex when everyone in the grove called out, “Tea, please… // MORE
Yue Guang Bai (White Moonlight) is one of the most beloved teas in our catalog. Yet despite its popularity, it seems to be a difficult tea to categorize. Is it sheng puer? Its Yunnan origins and its tangy, herbaceous aromatics suggest it could be. It lacks sheng puer’s typical astringency, though. Is it white tea?… // MORE
In the past 15 years, Chinese black teas have undergone a renaissance that has resulted in a proliferation of high quality black teas from many origins.
This year’s tea tour marks 11 years of Seven Cups providing professional-level education on the ground in China. Every year is different, and every detail gets planned by our own Zhuping Hodge. So, after months of planning, it’s exciting to see the trip take off. 2018’s tea tour has just passed its first leg, traveling… // MORE
Harvesting & Picking Standards If there was ever a sign of how sophisticated the western tea-drinker has become, it’s the large number of technical questions we now receive from our customers. Wulong tea is frequently the subject of these questions, and so to help our customers, we’ve written a short guide to its harvesting seasons… // MORE
We’re honored to be included in Kevin’s quarterly box. The following press release explains it all. Tucson, Arizona (PRWEB) December 23, 2014 Kevin Rose is known as a Silicon Valley guru, venture capitalist and partner in Google Ventures. In 2009 he traveled with Seven Cups founder Austin Hodge to the rainforests of Yunnan in southwest… // MORE
A few weeks back, Austin clunked a pint glass down on my desk. The glass was loaded to its rim with steeping leaves – thick, stemmy, Yunnan tea tree leaves. He told me it was young sheng puer and he demanded I have a sip. I had an empty stomach, but as an employee I… // MORE
Lu An Gua Pian – Punk Rock Green Tea While some sources allege that Lu An Gua Pian green tea was designed for political elite, and once a favorite of PRC premiere Zhou Enlai, I can’t help but feel there is something seriously anti-establishment about this tea – both in terms of its flavor and… // MORE
WuYi Cultivar #105 “Huang Guan Yin” | Shui Xian The following are excerpts taken from a collection of notes authored by Zhuping on April 22nd 2014 in Wuyishan. I picked out two sections of notes that focus on two Wuyi cultivars, one very well known and celebrated, and one widely used but rarely discussed. My own… // MORE
Bai Ji Guan This is excerpt from a batch of Zhuping’s notes sent back from the Wuyi Mountains a few days ago. These notes are part of an effort to pair teas in our catalog with detailed pictures of their bush varieties. I thought they were an excellent explanation of not only a specific… // MORE
Rare and Elusive Yellow Tea: Now Less Rare (But Still Elusive) Years ago I had the good luck to hear a veteran tea maker give a lecture on processing techniques that bracket one category of tea from another. His talk passed through great detail on the chemical contours a tea leaf and how manipulating them… // MORE
These days, writing about tea on the internet is such highly organized enterprise that I have to admit I’m hesitant to enter the fray.
